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Yea but that case at the link is what I would expect most of them to be, tragedies that occur much more frequently because of other factors, but the survivor/victim is grasping for a simpler, easier target to assign blame, and they happened to have taken finasteride at some point. Depression, suicide are very complex issues and the guy was in the midlife crisis age range. <Questionable correlation at best doesn't equal causation. Not to me, surprised its not more when you consider how many millions of lawsuits are filed each year. https://www.onelegal.com/blog/top-court-filing-statistics-from-around-the-country/ How much do attorneys like to file lawsuits? Quite a bit, if you examine the numbers. It’s estimated that there are more than 40 million lawsuits filed every year in the United States, and the total number of registered lawyers exceed one million. The statistic shows the number of lawyers in the United States from 2007 to 2018 was approximately 1.34 million. 2018 data from the American Bar Association on the nationwide population of lawyers indicates a total of 1,338,678 licensed, active attorneys in the United States. The total represents a 0.2% increase since last year and a 15.2% rise over the past decade in number of U.S. lawyers. The top five areas with the largest number of active attorneys in residence are New York (177,035) California (170,044) Texas (90,485) Florida (78,244) Illinois (63,422) https://www.keeps.com/learn/what-are-the-side-effects-of-finasteride-video Though rare, in clinical trials, 3.8% of male patients noticed some form of sexual side effects (versus 2.1% of patients using the placebo), including less desire for sex, difficulty in achieving an erection, or a decrease in the amount of semen released during sex. This may continue after stopping treatment. The number to focus on there is 3.8%. It’s small. Now, that’s not to diminish your concern or to say that the 3.8% people experiencing these symptoms don’t matter—but rather to point out that this isn’t a guaranteed side effect of taking finasteride. Despite what you may hear, for 96% of men, taking this common hair loss medication doesn’t mean you have to choose between your sex life and your hairline. Plus, it’s important to note that 2.1% of men using the placebo experienced the same side effects.

The first post looks more realistic, the second one here is more difficult to swallow, but either could always be the story in reverse, switching around before/after with after/before. In the 'recovery' pic on the right you can see the thinning a bit like the guy may have took the pic when he first started to notice some thinning. I'd be very suspicious of posts like this especially if they are dropping the names of specific brands of topical finasterde/minoxidil formulations or other magic potions you can't get from pharmacies. Could be anything from run-of-the-mill trolling, to people just trying to make a buck getting clicks and/or name dropping this or that product.

Be careful with cheap, assuming something will actually work, you often get what you pay for. I've had two tea-tree-free procedures I'm happy with. AND I have Chuck Norris on my side! In the words from his immortal Right Guard deodorant commercials, 'The best defense is not to offend."

I never said they did. As far as not being costly, that means its still not free, so your wallet will be at least a little lighter. I would expect to have heard more about pre-op tea tree shampoo from other doctors/patients here on the forum if there was actually anything substantial to it. Based on that 'recommendation,' and the potentially socially offensive act of not washing your hair the day before surgery, I'd be looking elsewhere for a doctor. I like to encourage all my fellow human beings to take daily showers for the sake of your fellow man. Or maybe this is one of those secrets of the Irish like leprechaun gold, and you've let the cat out of the bag!

Drinking beer and taking over the counter Tylenol, aka acetaminophen, for a cold can put the liver at risk too. Millions of guys have been taking finasteride for decades. The class action lawsuits would be piling up by now if there was any statistically significant risks.

Don't know anything about HRBR Dublin. Do they recommend that for all patients, or just because you told them about your skin conditions? It won't hurt anything, but your wallet, like you've noticed. While tea tree oil does have some anti-inflammatory properties, since you know about your skin conditions I assume you already have a regimen you are following to manage them. I'd stick with those and leave the tea tree shampoo for people with money to burn.

Doctor instructions vary of course, after my procedures 'normal' shampoo could be resumed after 5 days, wait 2 weeks to resume medicated shampoos like nizoral, H&S. Studies show the grafts are securely anchored by 9-10 days at the most, under the skin and connected into their new blood supplies. So I suspect even my doctor's instructions on the medicated shampoo were being a bit overly cautious. Again 9-10 days, make it an even two weeks to be 'extra' safe, then go back to what you were doing before with shampoo, especially if you have skin conditions that the medicated shampoo is helping you manage. There's nothing you were doing before your hair transplant that you have to wait for months before you can do again.

The grafts are secure by day 9, even when trying to pull them out https://www.bernsteinmedical.com/research/graft-anchoring-in-hair-transplantation/

If you have one of those baseball caps with the adjustable back, open up the adjuster so the hat is as wide as possible and gently put the hat on your head, then snap the adjuster to the loosest setting that doesn't put any pressure around your head. I used one with velcro instead of the snap-able ones so I got a perfect gentle fit that doesn't move around on my head.

About additional SMP to conceal the scar, not an expert or ever had it done, but since you've already had some done and its still pretty visible, maybe its more about the SMP artist's skill instead of your hair characteristics. I think you should consider researching for some better SMP artists instead of going back to the same one. I've seen some pretty good results, some pics and links below: One of our members @Gatsby had some great concealment with SMP And @hairthere is an SMP artist, his website has some before/afters at this link: https://www.aheadink.com/gallery/scar-camouflage-before-and-after This guy @alexXx999 started by initially choosing SMP instead of hair transplants, but his latest update today is looking to do some FUE to add some texture to his SMP. He doesn't have any scar concealment work done, but his SMP is some of the best I've seen.

Politics and disagreements in general aside, seeing other guys unsuccessfully trying to conceal their hair deficiencies is always a bit painful to watch for me. We are all biologically wired to care about how we look, but of course even in our equality obsessed society of today its still a lot less culturally acceptable for men to act on those instincts. I've used hair fibers and dermmatch in the past to manage my hair loss, and fortunately never had any episodes like Rudy did today. Does anybody know what he was using? Looks like it was more than just hair coloring, maybe something like dermmatch but that is vulnerable to sweating. When I was using dermmatch and fibers I've worked up sweats running after work, playing basketball, never had an issue like this.

Hi and welcome, whats the range of hair length/styling you want to have over the long term? Like from shaved up to a 1 or 2 guard buzz, or even longer? SMP looks best with anywhere from shaved to a 0 or 1 guard buzz at the most. Haven't seen much of people getting SMP to help with longer hair styles, but I see how it could help provide the illusion of more hair by lessening the contrast from your scalp skin color and your hair color. Its hard to tell where all you got the SMP ,it doesn't look very 'dense'. I see what looks like some dots in the crown and frontal area, but there's more space between them than I would expect. Have you tried finasteride yet to stabalize and maybe regain some of your loss on the top? Add minoxidil and give that a year then re-evaluate. On the likelihood of avoiding any further visible scarring, for most of us that would mean no further hair transplants, FUT or FUE. I've seen the occasional guy go to a top doc and due to a combination of the doctor's skill, tooling and great skin color and healing properties manage to have almost undetectable scarring. Judging by your FUT scar I think you are in the boat with the rest of us. That being said, a combination of hair styling, hair length, some SMP can make it so that no one is going to be able to detect much unless they get ridiculously close and stare.

The only donor area prep I've heard of is scalp laxity exercises to loosen your skin up for FUT procedures, where they cut out a strip of your donor area instead of extracting the hairs individually like they do during a FUE procedure. I think Eugenix only does FUE anyway so you wouldn't need to do that. You're already on finasteride, so just get plenty of sleep, eat clean, good stress mgmt in the weeks before and after your procedure. Stopping minoxidil before/after a procedure is because it dilates your blood vessels, which can cause excessive bleeding during the procedure and in the immediate healing days after. That being said, any time period longer than 2 weeks before and after the procedure is excessive and has no medical basis, and just increases the chances that you'll do some shedding. Its just one of many variations you'll notice between doctors when it comes to their pre-op and post-op instructions.

Topical minoxidil has been a no-go for me for years due to skin conditions, using the oral, my local HT doc writes me the scripts. Make sure you are also well hydrated, maybe apply a scalp oil or aloe gel for a week or two at night, wash it out in the morning, see if that helps, maybe its just a matter of restoring some moisturizing balance in your skin.

I take oral minoxidil due to skin conditions that prevent me from using the topical. The oral version is more potent and a replacement for the topical, don't use both formulations.

Somebody asked this about 6 wks ago, not recommended, you can read the thread here on why:

Its that "other" Trinity: death, taxes, ....and hairloss. Or maybe its not really loss, its just that all our scalp hairs move to our ears and noses to enjoy their retirement!

Usually its recommended for new finasteride users to wait up to a year before a hair transplant to see how well they respond, if they not only maintain but maybe recover some of what they've lost. Helps the doctor optimize design/density parameters for the procedure. But you got more hair than alot of folks coming on here starting to consider a HT that are much younger. Considering your current age, you don't have the nagging fear and unknown variable of how bad your hair loss is going to get over the next 30 or 40 years like alot of those younger guys. I think you can safely skip the waiting period and thicken up your crown and frontal areas now.

Agree here, you can never count your eggs until they've hatched. The doctor/staff skills and mistakes, this being your first HT, etc aside, there may be some unknown physiology/medical condition factors unique to you that end up causing a high(er) percentage of the transplanted hairs to not root successfully. Ultimately it comes down to your personal risk tolerance because nobody can guarantee -how much shedding and additional loss will happen when you stop minoxidil -how much you are going to lose down the road -how successful any hair transplants you have will actually end up being

If you're only applying it to your hairline currently, that's the most dht vulnerable and even if the meds help you hold on to them for now, in the long run you are likely to lose alot of them anyway. But you say you have some mild diffuse thinning in addition to your front hairline. That's where I'd be more concerned about not using minoxidil, the hair in your mid scalp and crown areas are more resilient than your front, so they are more worth the long term protection and enhancement that fin+min provides. Especially the crown, a very difficult area to rebuild with transplanted hairs, can use up ALOT of grafts in the long run.

The question is whether the convenience of not using min is worth the additional grafts to maintain acceptable hair coverage -additional grafts you may not ultimately have in the long term war against your hairloss. Some guys ultimately loose so much hair that they run out of donor hair to transplant into the thinning areas. So in the words of dirty harry, "Do you feel lucky.. Some factors in this -like how old you are, how long you've been losing, how well you've responded to the meds -did you start fin and min at the same time? or did you start fin first then later min, or the other way around, so that you have some idea how well you respond to each. They work best together of course, fin protecting the hair from dht and min extending the growth cycles so you have more hair growing at the same time and helping to thicken them up.

The way to think about finasteride: hairloss is a loaded gun, and finasteride is taking DHT bullets out of the revolving chamber -up to around 70% depending on your genetics/physiology. That means there's still around 30% or more of the bullets floating around in your bloodstream that can potentially latch on to your hair follicle receptors and thus contribute to furthering your loss. The sooner you start taking it the less of an onslaught your hair follicles will have to deal with over the course of your life. And depending on how sensitive your hair follicles are to DHT, that can buy you anywhere from a couple of years to hopefully more than a couple decades. 1mg a day is the optimal for hairloss benefits, increasing dosage is not going to accomplish anything, any 'pauses' in the visual loss that you notice after a dosage increase are coincidental, actually just periods where there hasn't been enough additional accumulated DHT damage to take out the next vulnerable hairs.

Your thinning dips pretty far in the back, and there's some patchy areas below that, agree with @JohnAC71 about your donor strength. Are you sure about loss being stable since your consult 3 yrs ago with picture evidence, or are you going by how you remember checking in the mirror? Also in your OP you mention that you've never been on meds -are you against getting on finasteride? Dr Bisanga's patient advisor posted a video topic about thinning in the donor area at this link here and said good candidates for transplants have less than 20% thinning in their donor areas. I'm actually waiting on a reply to a question that I asked there about whether someone getting on finasteride and strengthening their donor would be enough to change his mind.

I would just cut them as you need them, one pill at a time, that's what I do. Just in case any of the ingredients degrade faster when they are exposed to oxygen, etc, because you are cutting through the pill's protective coating, you don't want to potentially lower the potency.

As long as the sauna is set lower than extra-crispy you'll be fine